Clair Huffaker - The Cowboy and the Cossack

I won, as I sort of hinted before.

But I wasn’t too proud of it. Every time he hit me, it hurt. But it was almost like it didn’t really matter. Because he could have hit me with a goddamned ax and I’d have still gone back at him. And every time I hit him, I felt sorry for the whole way he was. Maybe it was because I knew that in the final, final judgment of whatever gods there are, I was right and he was wrong. In any case, I knew I’d whip him. And I also knew that then I’d have to take care of him.

And that’s what happened.

When Shad came back to camp a little later, packing his saddle on his shoulder, he looked at me swabbing down Dixie’s beaten-up face and asked, which was kind of natural, “What happened?”

“He fell down,” I said.

“And you?”

I couldn’t see Rostov, but I had a feeling there was a faint grin on his face as he and some of his men now mounted up and rode away. It was plain that he’d just stayed long enough to make sure nobody got killed.

Dixie was awake enough to know what was going on. And he was damn well aware that he’d caused what could have been an ugly time between Shiny and Shad. I squeezed some more water from the cloth into his black left eye and said, “I fell down tryin’ t’ hold him up.”

“That ain’t too funny,” Shad said.

I’d done as much as I could for Dixie medically, so I stood up. “I know, Shad. We had a fight.”

“What over?”

I could see Dixie getting ready to die then, for what he’d done, and he deserved it. “I just don’t like ’im,” I said.

We walked back over toward Shad’s bunk, where he dropped his saddle to the ground, quietly looking around. “Camp got torn up a little.”

“Yeah,” I said, “a little.”

He lay down, his head resting in the seat of his saddle and his hat shading his eyes. “You just don’t like Dixie?”

“That’s right.”

Shad shifted his hat better against the sun. “Levi,” he said, so tired and yet so patient, “I know that fight was because of Shiny.” He took a deep, long breath. “And I appreciate your point of view.”

“That leads up to a ‘but,’” I said, “where a boss tells a dumb roustabout like me what t’ do.”

“Right.” Shad moved his hat a little bit again. “And ya’ ought t’ be more peaceful.” He relaxed now like a cougar I’d seen napping one time, relaxed but ready and powerful all in the same instant. “Don’t waste your time on little fights”—he yawned—“when at any minute there’re so many big ones all ready an’ waitin’ to bust out.”

“Would you have had me do other?”

I’m pretty sure he almost said something like, “I guess not,” but that sort of backing-away statement went against his nature. Instead he said, “Just don’t do it again.”

“Okay, boss.”

And then he was into his first brief sleep in about twenty-four hours.

Looking down at him, still reminded of that cougar who’d been asleep yet ready to move instantly, I had a brief, sudden insight into the meaning of the term “cat nap.”

With both the cougar and Shad there was so much easy, quick power there that either one of them could tear an enemy in half while their eyes were still flicking open.

Spooky if they were against you.

Reassuring if they were on your side.

WHEN I turned to move off, I almost bumped into Slim, who’d come back into camp and was quietly sizing things up. And he’d heard enough of what Shad and I were saying to take it from there.

“You an’ Dixie been playin’ Civil War?”

“Sort of.”

“Hmm. Looks like the South lost again.”

“It was close t’ bein’ Pyrrhic.” It hadn’t been at all close, but that seemed like kind of the right thing to say.

Slim nodded. “While Shad’s gettin’ his forty winks, let’s wander over t’ the cossacks’ playgrounds. Rostov’s over there.”

“Okay. I’ll toss a saddle on Buck.” In turning, Dixie came into my line of sight. His eye and a couple of big bruises were starting to lump up something fierce. I hesitated. “Hey, Dixie?”

“Yeah?”

“Want t’ come along, over t’ the meadow?”

“Sure.” He shrugged. “Why not?”

A couple of minutes later about half a dozen of us rode off over the hill and down into the big meadow where the cossacks were already doing some interesting things. Rostov was on his big black near the rock, and except for two of his men in camp and six on lookout, the rest of them were out galloping around in the meadow, but they weren’t racing.

We all pulled up near him and took a better look at what was going on. All of the men in the meadow had their sabers out. About half of them were going at full speed to where the creek flowed quietly, leaping it, and slashing the water with their sabers as they flew over. The others were near the center of the meadow, and what they were doing seemed even sillier, if possible. They’d put up six more slender poles in a fairly straight line about fifty feet apart from each other, and on the top of each pole they’d mounted a giant pine cone. The men down there were charging along the line swinging at each pine cone, but never hitting it hard enough to cut it really deep or topple it to the ground.

Slim was watching carefully and not making any quick judgments, but Dixie did, and for once I was inclined to agree with him. “What the hell they doin’, Captain?” He frowned, his tone indicating a kind of puzzled disbelief.

“Practicing and improving their use of the saber.”

“Well, hell,” Crab said, “it sure don’t look like much t’ hit some water an’ a pine cone.”

“Remember,” Slim said easily, “the way they hit them wolves that night?”

His point was damn well taken, and none of us had a quick answer to it.

“Notice the way they slash the water,” Rostov explained. “Of course anyone can hit it. But try doing it in mid-leap with the cutting edge of the blade entering so perfectly that the water is not disturbed.”

“My God!” Natcho said, watching more closely. “That’s impossible!”

And that sure as hell was right. Between the next three cossacks leaping the stream I doubt if their blades caused more than two drops of water. And Natcho was the best one of us to remark on it, too. I remembered one time when some of us had gone for a kind of a halfway bath and halfway swim in a pond on the Slash-D Ranch. When most of us had leaped in, we’d damnere splashed the pond dry. But when Natcho had jumped in, his hands were held out together in front of him and his legs were straight out behind him, so that altogether he was shaped like an arrow, and he hadn’t made hardly more than a ripple.

“What about them big pine cones?” Slim asked.

“They’re the best natural duplication, with a similar resilience, that we have on hand to represent a man’s head, which is the best place to hit him with a saber.”

Rufe spoke for a number of us when he said, “ Yuck. ”

Rostov glanced at him, then looked at me and saw that I felt the same way. There was a tiny flicker of dark but somehow warm humor deep within his eyes. “It requires a powerful cut or thrust to make a body wound fatal, and it takes a moment to get your saber back into use. The neck and the throat are the most vulnerable to a relatively light, fatal slash.” Rostov gave me and Rufe another brief look. “It’s not difficult to decapitate a man, but in a battle it takes too much time and effort.”

“So them fellas out there,” Slim said, “are just cuttin’ deep enough into their pine cones, without loppin’ ’em off.”

Rostov nodded. “These are just a small part of Dzhigitovkas , our war games on horseback.”